Wednesday, 9 November 2016

The Bentley S2 / VIDEO: Vintage: Bentley S2 Continental | Drive it!

The Bentley S2 is a
luxury car produced by Bentley from 1959 until 1962. The successor to
the S1, it featured the new Rolls-Royce - Bentley L Series V8 engine
and improved air conditioning made possible by its increased output.
Power steering was also standard, and a new dashboard and steering
wheel were introduced. Some early S2s were built with the earlier S1
dashboard.

A high-performance
S2-derived Continental edition was also produced.

In all, 1,920
standard and long-wheelbase S2 car chassis were built between 1959
and 1962. Almost all were fitted with standard factory bodywork. A
number had coachbuilt bodies by Park Ward, Hooper, H. J. Mulliner &
Co., and James Young.

Announced at the
beginning of October 1959 the S2 replaced the S1's straight-six
engine the a new aluminium Rolls-Royce - Bentley L Series V8 shared
with the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II. It displaced 6.2 L (6230 cc/380
in³), and offered significantly improved performance.

As advertised in The
Times, Friday, Oct 02, 1959:

“The cylinder
block and heads are cast in aluminum alloy and hydraulic tappets
operate the overhead valves. The engine has a compression ratio of 8
to 1 and is fitted with twin carburetors with automatic choke.

The British
Coachbuilding Mulliner family traces back to 1760, when the company
was building coaches for the Royal Mail in Northampton.

There were at one
time four separate companies trading with the name Mulliner, all seem
to have descended from the original family:

- Arthur Mulliner
based in Northampton.

- Mulliner in
Liverpool who also opened a showroom in Brook Street, Mayfair, London
with Arthur Mulliner trading as Mulliner (London) Ltd.

- H.J. Mulliner who
bought the Mayfair showroom.

- Mulliners of
Birmingham.

Henry Jervis
Mulliner founded H.J. Mulliner & Co. in 1900 in the Mayfair area
of London where the factory was set up. This was probably the
premises previously occupied by Mulliners (London) Ltd. The location
was convenient as his clients, the nobility could afford his
services. One of the early clients was C.S. Rolls who had a body
built on a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost for his own use.

In 1906 the works
moved out of Mayfair to Chiswick and shortly afterwards H.J. Mulliner
sold his interest in the company to John Croall and retired. The
family connection was maintained as Croall employed H. J. Mulliner's
brother in law Frank Piesse to run the company.

Although H.J.
Mulliner designed coachwork for C. S. Rolls' personal two-seater
Silver Ghost roadster, it was not until 1928 that the firm began to
regularly display its hand-crafted bodies on a Rolls-Royce chassis.
From that year on, H.J. Mulliner always exhibited at least one
Rolls-Royce chassis graced with their custom coachwork.

Following World War
II, Mulliner was one of the few coachbuilders to resume building
traditional, bespoke coachwork. By this time, the firm's reputation
was such that it focused primarily on being a supplier to Rolls-Royce
and Bentley chassis, crafting the finest, high quality saloons,
sedancas, limousines and dropheads for the world's wealthy and elite.
By the 1950s, however, Mulliner moved away from the traditional
wood-frame coachbuilding techniques of its past, turning instead to
the more modern methods of its competitors using a "stressed
skin" all-steel structure.

Rolls-Royce acquired
Mulliner in 1959 and merged it with Park Ward which they had owned
since 1939 forming Mulliner-Park Ward in 1961. This new entity can
hardly be called a coachbuilder, because it was no longer an
independant company and they were solely focussing on Rolls-Royce and
Bentley.

Today, Mulliner is
no more than the personal commissioning department for Bentley,
turning the Mulliner name into nothing more than some sort of luxury
badge for standard works cars with a personalized interior.

H. J. Mulliner &
Co. was a well-known British coachbuilder operating from Bedford
Park, Chiswick, West London. The company which owned it was formed by
H J Mulliner in 1897 but the business was a continuing branch of a
family business founded in Northampton in the 1760s to hire out
carriages. In December 1909 the controlling interest in this company
passed to John Croall & Sons of Edinburgh. Croall sold that
interest to Rolls-Royce in 1959.

"Mulliner"
is now the personal commissioning department for Bentley.

Henry Jervis
Mulliner (1870–1967), born in Liverpool but raised in Chiswick, was
the second son of Robert Bouverie Mulliner (1830–1902) from
Northampton, third son of Francis Mulliner (1789–1841) of
Leamington Spa and Northampton. Robert Bouverie Mulliner had first
established a thriving coachbuilding business in Liverpool in the mid
1850s then sold that to his brother and in the early 1870s started
another in Chiswick on the outskirts of London.[1]

His son H J Mulliner
incorporated his own company in 1897 while with Mulliner London
Limited.

He found a special
interest in the automobile side of that business and expanded in 1900
by buying from Mulliner London Limited the Mulliner showroom in Brook
Street, Mayfair, London.

The location was
more convenient for his clients than Chiswick. One of the early
clients was C.S. Rolls who had a body built on a Rolls-Royce Silver
Ghost for his own use.

In 1906 the London
works were moved from Mayfair to Chiswick and in December 1909 H J
Mulliner sold a controlling interest in the company to John Croall &
Sons of Edinburgh.

A family connection
was maintained as Croall employed H J Mulliner's wife's brother,
Frank Piesse (1885–1960), to run the company.

Although bodies were
fitted to other chassis, by the 1930s virtually the entire output was
being fitted to Rolls-Royce and Bentleys.

Rolls-Royce acquired
Mulliner in July 1959 and merged it with Park Ward which they had
owned since 1939 forming Mulliner Park Ward in 1961. A financial
columnist noted that the (cash) outlay for Rolls-Royce was relatively
small as the net assets of John Croall were around £250,000. It was
noted that Mulliner was one of the last independent coach builders,
others being controlled by motor manufacturers or distributors.